Commentary from John Stamos on This Post regarding the new hippies.  Why yes John, I have read Doctor Seuss.  Let it be said that Seuss could get his point across in a few pages of a children’s book.  Rand on the other hand…  Well to paraphrase Mark Twain’s comment on the music of Richard Wagner, Ayn Rand’s novels are better then they read.

Meanwhile, back in Atlas Slouched…

You’re in the high rent district

Approximately 2% of the American households make more than $250,000 a year and (you may find this hard to believe) a very high percentage of these high-earning go-getting producers spend their days commenting over at Michelle Malkin’s place… when they’re not busy flying their Lear jets up to Nova Scotia to see the total eclipse of the sun.

Scenes from the Go Go Gaults:

• I’ve resigned from my job, and I’m selling my rental properties. After this, I’m moving to a rural little town and simplifying everything. I’ll be reading so many more books soon, if that sort of thing is still allowed.

• What motivation do we have to make more money? Only to have it confiscated by the Feds. Bad enough CA just increased a variety of taxes, including the income tax. That’s why I’m looking to move to NV. I was just there on Saturday. Won’t be too long now.

• I decided I will endeavor to take more business trips and continuing education classes at exotic places and try to reduce taxable income.

• Yep, it’s happening. Several friends are shutting down to sustaining levels. Partly due to housing and the rest due to the tax hikes.

• I shut down my online businesses in early November, I don’t remember why. I’m now a net user of Obama Cheese. I may even apply for food stamps.

• Small businesses will lay off employees, and I hope the first to go are the ones that voted for bho. They wanted ‘hope and change’, well you got it. These bho voters have NO idea how much more taxes they are going to be paying. I just hope those bho voters have their IRA, 401k and stocks cratered as much as those who DID not vote for bho. Such(sic) it up kids!

• I’m starting my victory garden this spring. My sister is expanding hers and in exchange for my helping with that I will be able to claim some of the produce. I’ve been couponing for over a year now and have a nice stockpile of food for when things get really, really bad. I can’t believe that my country is on this path. From Ronald Reagan to this Marxist in the span of one generation. Unbelievable.

• I have a friend who is planning to not work overtime this year to stay well below the dangerous benchmark that is 250k. His point was that he might as well take some time off and enjoy and relax rather than work and give every dollar above 250 away. I don’t blame his reasoning and the loss is, he spends his money.

You have to wonder if this guy ever paid taxes because here be basically admits he doesn’t understand how the income tax works:

ABC News reports on "upper-income taxpayers" who are trying to reduce their income so they avoid proposed tax increases on those earning more than $250,000. 

According to ABC, one attorney "plans to cut back on her business to get her annual income under the quarter million mark should the Obama tax plan be passed by Congress and become law."  According to the attorney: "We are going to try to figure out how to make our income $249,999.00."  ABC also quotes a dentist who is trying to figure out how to reduce her income.

This is stunningly wrong. 

The ABC article is based on the premise that an individual’s entire income is taxed at the same rate.  If that were the case, it would be possible for a family earning $249,999 to have a higher after-tax income than a family earning $255,000, because the family earning $249,999 would pay a lower tax rate.

But that isn’t actually how income tax works. 

In reality, a family earning $255,000 will pay the higher tax rate only on its last $5,001 in income; the first $249,999 will continue to be taxed at the old rate.  So intentionally lowering your income from $255,000 to $249,999 is counter-productive; it will result in a lower after-tax income. 

The people ABC quoted don’t seem to understand that.  Worse, ABC doesn’t seem to understand it, either.

Anyway…back to Atlas Slouched, and TBogg’s personal favorite:

• We also have “gone Galt”. Hubby decided to retire and start Medicare instead of our original plan of waiting two years.

Well that’s showing those looters a thing or two.  Meanwhile, Andrew Sullivan has a note from a reader that explains it all for the dense of skull…

Downsized out of my career in my mid-50’s, after 20+ years of faithful service to a 150-year-old company that declared bankruptcy some months after my termination.  I got a decent severance – in the latest wave of layoffs, there were people with more years of service who got zilch.   I have found some freelance daily-hire work here and there – last year my after-tax/after-insurance net was about 25% of what I had been making. Still looking, still hoping.

 The 401(k) that I’d faithfully funded since the mid-80s lost a third of its value in just a few weeks.  I had bad vibes about the bankster/gangsters over a year ago (CDO’s and swaps? I’d read about them on internet message boards back in 2006, but gave more credence to my adviser since he’s an expert and the internet is notoriously unreliable.  Fat lot of good that did.)  I know he wasn’t trying to steer me in a wrong direction – he feels as badly as I do.  Thank God BushCo never got their filthy mitts on Social Security.
 
 I’ve always conducted my financial affairs in a conservative fashion, so I have a (dwindling) cushion to rely on and some equity in a home with a (for now) manageable mortgage.  I pay for my own health insurance (a lousy policy with high premiums and deductibles – please, dear God – help me stay healthy.)  The premiums are about four times more than I spend for food, all of which is prepared at home by me.  I haven’t been more than 15 miles from home in more than a year.  When cabin fever sets in, I go for a walk.
 
 I’m not complaining, really I’m not.  I am able to stay warm and dry and fed, and current on my bills.  I am fortunate – I know I am blessed.  I don’t take it for granted and don’t consider myself more worthy than others who find themselves in far more dire straits.  I could very well be in their shoes before this is all over.

This is exactly what woke me up from my libertarian delusion back during the big Reagan recession: seeing so many decent, hard working people who did everything the way they were supposed to get clobbered because the gods of finance and industry turned out to be fallible human beings too, and not Greek gods holding the world on their shoulders.  I was working as an architectural model maker back then, and watched appalled as developers and their financiers ran themselves off a cliff, knowing full well they were heading for the edge, knowing full well they were going to fall off eventually, knowing full well it would be a financial disaster, but utterly unable to stop themselves from chasing those last few dollars off that cliff.  When it was over, nearly all my clients, the businesses I sold my services to as a model maker, had gone belly up and I was mowing lawns to make ends meet.  But at least I didn’t have any mouths to feed.

When the brakes came off the savings and loans, the crooks moved right in and without oversight, there was nothing to stop them.  And even had they all been prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, the damage was done.  There’s the problem.  I saw families who had once owned nice homes, whose parents worked hard, made good money, saved responsibly and lived within their means, living in tents in campgrounds because everything they had vanished in the savings and loan scandals. What good would prosecuting the savings and loan crooks have done for them?  Their money is gone. 

That was the end of my libertarian years.  I saw that greed is not good after all.  I saw that wealth is not an indicator of either moral, or common sense.  I saw that to err is human, but to really screw things up you need a lot of money.  I saw that selfishness is not a virtue.  Pride is a virtue.  Ambition is a virtue.  Selfishness is a cancer on your soul.  It turns your neighbors in this life, and all their hopes, all their dreams, everything they ever made for themselves, their families, their kids, into play money.

Memo to self: Don’t get a PayPal debit card…

Driver Fills up Gas Tank, Receives Bill For $81 Billion

When Juan Zamora stopped to refuel his car at a Conoco service station in Richland, the gas pump’s calculator registered a total fee of $26.

But in a freak computer hiccup, the PayPal debit card he used recorded the transaction as $81,400,836,908. Yes, you read that correctly, that’s more than 81 billion dollars.

Initially, Mr. Zamora thought it must’ve been a joke. But after contacting PayPal customer service he was surprised to see that the company treated it as anything but a laughing matter.

“Somebody from a foreign country who spoke in broken English argued with me for 10 to 15 minutes,” Zamora said. ” ‘Did you get the gas?’ he asked. Like I had to prove that I didn’t pump $81,400,836,908 in gas!”

This is more understandable then it looks.  If PayPal is outsourcing its customer service to Zimbabwe then the rep would have had no trouble believing you’d bought eighty-one billion dollars worth of gas.

So…in case you’re wondering why your 401k is in the gutter…here’s part of the problem.

This article in Wired explains it in more detail.  The above is a formula the gods of Wall Street were using to assess risk.  Investors like risk.  What they don’t like is uncertainty.  If they know how to price risk, then they’ll lend.  The greater the risk, the higher the interest rate.  If they loose the bet every now and then that’s okay, as long as the rest of the bets pay off and they make money.  But when they don’t know how to price risk, they won’t lend. 

What makes the current financial mess look disturbingly like the Great Depression is that there is actually a lot of money available to lend, but nobody is lending any.  Because nobody feels confidant enough that they understand the risks anymore.  They don’t want to loose any more money then they already have.  So they’re sitting on what they’ve got.  This is why the Federal Government has to step in and inject money into the economy to keep it going.  The banks and investors who usually do that…aren’t.

The biggest problem for investors is assessing risk in complex systems, such as the mortgage markets…

What is the chance that any given home will decline in value? You can look at the past history of housing prices to give you an idea, but surely the nation’s macroeconomic situation also plays an important role. And what is the chance that if a home in one state falls in value, a similar home in another state will fall in value as well?

H.L. Mencken once said, "For every problem there is a solution that is simple, elegant, and wrong."  Consider the Wired article on the Wall Street collapse an example.  The above formula, crafted by mathematician David X. Li, seemed to simply and elegantly solve the problem of assessing risk.  But it didn’t.  It solved correlation. The best quote in the Wired article I’ve linked to this one, from Nassim Nicholas Taleb, a hedge fund manager and the author of The Black Swan…

"Anything that relies on correlation is charlatanism."

Beware your assumptions.  Solving for correlation did not solve for risk.  Correlation is pretty poor at solving for anything actually, not just in finances.  We know poor people are thieves because we have seen many thieves who are poor.  We know Jews are greedy because we have seen many greedy Jews.  We know single parent families produce problem children because we have seen so many problem children who come from single parent families.  We know homosexuality is caused by being molested as a child, because we have seen so many homosexuals who were molested as children…

You have to be careful where you draw conclusions from.  Correlation is not evidence.  It is only suggestive.  And especially beware of the conclusions you expected.  David X. Li’s formula didn’t cause the crash.  This did:

The damage was foreseeable and, in fact, foreseen. In 1998, before Li had even invented his copula function, Paul Wilmott wrote that "the correlations between financial quantities are notoriously unstable." Wilmott, a quantitative-finance consultant and lecturer, argued that no theory should be built on such unpredictable parameters. And he wasn’t alone. During the boom years, everybody could reel off reasons why the Gaussian copula function wasn’t perfect. Li’s approach made no allowance for unpredictability: It assumed that correlation was a constant rather than something mercurial. Investment banks would regularly phone Stanford’s Duffie and ask him to come in and talk to them about exactly what Li’s copula was. Every time, he would warn them that it was not suitable for use in risk management or valuation.

In hindsight, ignoring those warnings looks foolhardy. But at the time, it was easy. Banks dismissed them, partly because the managers empowered to apply the brakes didn’t understand the arguments between various arms of the quant universe. Besides, they were making too much money to stop.

Besides, they were making too much money to stop.  Besides.  Besides.  Right there’s the problem.   They kept launching the Space Shuttle Challenger with O-ring joints that didn’t work the way the models said they should and they didn’t understand them but they kept on working, so they kept on launching.  Until one of those joints killed good people who were trying to extend the human reach into space.  This is such typical human behavior and it’s burned us all throughout our history and you’d think by now we’d know better, and rigorously teach our young how to avoid this trap.  But we keep on doing it.  There’s a saying I particularly despise:  If it works, don’t fix it.  There’s another way of saying that:  Let’s wait for it to break.

There are always two people in every picture: the photographer and the viewer.
-Ansel Adams

I am a graphic artist.  That is to say, I express via imagery.  I don’t perform on stage.  I don’t write.  I am not a composer of music.  I paint.  I draw.  But mostly I take one of my cameras and go for these little strolls around my world.  I am a photographer.  Not a professional nor a recognized artist, but a serious amateur.  I have some galleries up here on the web site you can peruse if you like.  They’re typical of what I do.  Photography as been a passion of mine ever since I was in grade school.  I think I can say after all these years of doing it, that I have a distinctive voice.

I don’t like a lot of what I produce.  That is to say, I would rather be producing something a tad more cheerful, or sensuous maybe, or beautiful.  But I have this urge to produce a lot of this…

…and…this…

…and…this…

…that I can’t turn away from.  I have to make these images.  It’s what I do.  I take a camera, decide if I’m in a color or black and white frame of mind just then, and go for a wander.  Sooner or later something I’ve never been able to put words to tugs me over to something, and then I am exploring a subject.  Snap…circle it a bit…snap…circle some more…snap…snap…snap…  It’s what I do when I get a camera in my hands.   Oh yes…sometimes I get a chance to do a little of this…

I love this one…but even this, if you look at it carefully, has a sense of the other stuff in it just below the surface. 

For almost a decade I gave up taking photographs because I couldn’t stand to look at what was coming out of me anymore.  This is hard for some folks of a…shall we say…religious right persuasion…to get about the artsy tofu and brie types they just love to loath…let alone liberals in general.  It isn’t so much If it feels good do it, as You do what you must.  As a matter of fact yes, it is entirely possible to be consumed with a subject matter you don’t much like, and still feel absolutely compelled to approach it with fierce honesty.  But honesty is even less welcome then art in the mega-mall cathedrals of the heartland.

Via Sullivan…  It seems they don’t like looking at pictures of themselves at Patrick Henry College…

My first preview of at photographer Jona Frank’s book of portraits about Patrick Henry College occurred through Mother Jones, where it appeared alongside image galleries on phone sex operators, Aryan outfitters, and women in Afghanistan. (Mother Jones’ photo galleries reflect a wide variety of topics, but I’m mentioning the ones it promoted alongside the photos from Frank’s second book, Right: Portraits from the Evangelical Ivy League.)

The students of Patrick Henry College, the nation’s first residential college designed for young people who grew up as homeschoolers, looked awfully stiff and serious. I asked Ed Veith, a professor of literature and provost of the college, for his thoughts. Veith sent along a memo that he wrote to Patrick Henry students when he saw the book:

I was greatly angered when I saw the book Right: Portraits from the Evangelical Ivy League by the photographer Jona Frank. The book features pictures of many of you — portrayed in the [worst] way possible — with an accompanying text that plays to all the leftwing stereotypes about Christians and conservatives. The dishonesty of the artist is staggering: she posed you in stiff and awkward positions and told you not to smile; then she caricatured you as stiff, awkward, and without a sense of humor. In reality, I know that you PHC students are lively and interesting, with vibrant and highly-individualistic personalities. I think that Ms. Frank, who hung around campus for months and who even visited some of your families, betrayed your trust, violated your privacy, and distorted your identity.

Since writing to Veith, I’ve found another collection of Frank’s PHC images at Newsweek. That collection includes a narration by Frank, in which she speaks with clear affection for these students. Newsweek’s gallery is well worth a visit, as Frank’s narration is so warm and engaging.

If the photographer was any good…and Frank’s photos can put you in mind of another Frank in their straightforwardness…then her images are honest representations of what she saw, what she found when she went to Patrick Henry.  But you have to understand what Adams is saying in that quote I put at the top of this post.  The photographer is always present in every image.  But so are you, the viewer.  Frank didn’t set out to preach and not seeing the sermon he expected out of her, Veith got angry.  But not every negative review, is a bad review.

[Update…]  So I bought a copy of Frank’s photo book.  It’s good…but I wouldn’t put her in the same class as Robert Frank.  Most of the photos are posed.  Few are the kind of beautiful human moments frozen out of time shots that Frank did so astonishingly well.  But Robert Frank casts a large shadow over all of us.  He’s one of Photography’s perfect masters.  Jona Frank’s work here is good, she works well with her subjects and all her photographs are taken in their environment.  You get the sense of how they fit together, how the people and their environment are each expressions of the other.  But she is not a beachcomber searching for the stray seashell, the random pebble that tells stories of the open sea.  She does environmental portraiture and she’s good at it.  Robert Frank did moments in time.  Different stuff.

Via Fark…which is a good source for Valentine’s Day complaining…

Stillwater funeral home to host Valentine’s Day dinner for widows and widowers

I’m glad to see the romance is still alive.  So to speak.  And that reminds me…time for some more entries in the poster contest!

Over at Pam’s House Blend, the Homophobia Is A Made-Up Word argument rises grimly once more from its grave, and starts eating brains…

Words have meaning. Henceforth, I shall make a reasonable effort to eliminate "homophobia" and "homophobic" from my vocabulary.

The word "homophobia" suggests that the intolerant are afflicted; It follows that a treatable pathology can be associated with the condition. Moreover, the implication is that this condition represents an irrational fear like "acrophobia," a fear of heights or "zoophobia," a fear of animals. How about "pogonophobia" which is a fear of beards?

Hey…how about lexophobia, which is fear of dictionaries?  Okay…I just made that one up.  But a lot of people suffer from it.  

Yeah words have meaning.  And homophobia is a perfectly useful word that takes its meaning from another word, xenophobia, and applies it to homosexuals rather then foreigners or strangers.  Here is xenophobia:

xenophobia
noun

Etymology:
    New Latin
Date:
    1903

Fear or hatred of strangers or foreigners or of anything that is strange or foreign.
 

The word homophobia simply replaces strangers or foreigners with homosexuals in the definition.  The meaning is the same, it just refers to a different class or category of people who are the object of the fear and/or hatred.  Simple, no?

Apparently not.  This isn’t complicated.  Yes, the words phobic and phobia do not have that meaning, but the motherfucking suffixes can!  Learn to read a dictionary and look up the goddamned suffix!  There is nothing wrong with the usage of the suffix in the word homophobia. 

This argument makes me want to scream whenever I hear it.  How about hydrophobic?  That’s a molecule that does not bind with water.  How can a molecule have an irrational fear of water?  Tell a chemist that they should eliminate that word from their vocabulary because a molecule cannot have fear, irrational or otherwise.  Or hydrophobia…which is another term for rabies.  There’s thermophobic, which is intolerance for high temperatures by either inorganic material or organisms.  Or photophobia…which is hypersensitivity to light?  There are a lot of words like these, that do not refer exclusively or even partially to irrational fear.

The argument that homophobia just means an irrational fear of homosexuals is another one of those cute little rhetorical ploys that bigots throw out there to confuse people.  They do that.  They will always do that.  Accepting their definitions for words and terms and employing others you only think makes the concept more clear doesn’t buy you anything because they will simply redefine those new words and terms too.  And they’ll keep on doing that. 

How…just how…do you spend Any time in this fight without knowing that, as a matter of fact no, the other side actually does Not want to make the meaning of things clear?  Do you just sleepwalk through the culture war?  Look at how they redefine the word homosexual for chrissake.  On the one hand, there is no such thing as a homosexual because it is a leaned behavior we could all stop engaging in if we wanted to.  There are no homosexuals, there is only homosexuality.  On the other hand, the homosexual agenda threatens the very fabric of western civilization, and militant homosexuals want to destroy the nuclear family.  Yes words have meaning.  And to the culture warriors that meaning is whatever they need it to be at any given moment.  They don’t want to make anything clear.  They don’t want you to understand their point of view.  They aren’t arguing in good faith.  They never argue in good faith.  They want to win.

We don’t have to help them by letting them turn every converstation about gay people into a game of Calvinball.  Homophobia is a perfectly legitimate word that describes a particular kind of bigotry.  When one of those bigots starts yap, yap, yapping that they’re not a homophobe because they aren’t afraid of homosexuals, smack them upside the head with a dictionary and show them their photograph next to the word Bigot.

I’ve considered this one a good test of mendacious jerk factor ever since I ran into a particularly loathsome creep on Usenet named Steve Fordyce, whose favorite hobby horse it was…

The marriage laws do not discriminate against homosexuals.
They have the same right to marry a person of the opposite
sex that heterosexuals do.

Now, everybody…including the bigots who make this argument by the way…know that this is a bogus argument. Let’s apply it to a different set of people…

Laws that prohibit the practice of Judaism do
not discriminate against Jews, since
Christians have to obey those laws too.

The problem is it sounds perfectly logical.  How can you argue that treating people the same is discrimination?  But it’s a fallacy of ambiguity. To say that you are treating everyone the same is not to say you are treating everyone equitably.  The trick here is that a word is being used in two different senses at the same time.  Look at this again…

The marriage laws do not discriminate against homosexuals.
They have the same right to marry a person of the opposite
sex that heterosexuals do.

The problem is with the word ‘discriminate’.  In this statement, it is being used in two difference senses at the same time.  Let’s look at its definition.  This one I took from The Free Dictionary…

discriminate

Verb

[-nating, -nated]

1. to make a distinction against or in favor of a particular person or group

2. to recognize or understand a difference: to discriminate between right and wrong [Latin discriminare to divide]

So in the one sense, yes, the law makes no distinction between gay and straight.  But it does not follow then, that the second sense of the word ‘discriminate’, to make a distinction against or in favor of a particular person or group is also not true.  Let’s rephrase it…

The marriage laws do not distinguish between homosexuals
and heterosexuals.  They give homosexuals the same
right to marry a person of the opposite sex they give
to heterosexuals.

This statement is both true and much clearer now as to adverse discrimination, in the first sense of the word, that homosexuals endure even though they are not being discriminated in the second sense of the word.  Let’s try it another way.

The marriage laws treat homosexuals and heterosexuals
equally.  Both groups have exactly the same right to marry
a person of the opposite sex.

Here the ambiguity is on the word ‘equally’.  Once again, it is being used in two difference senses at the same time…

Equally

adj.

1. Having the same quantity, measure, or value as another.

2. Mathematics Being the same or identical to in value.

3.

a. Having the same privileges, status, or rights: equal before the law.

b. Being the same for all members of a group: gave every player an equal chance to win.

4.

a. Having the requisite qualities, such as strength or ability, for a task or situation: "Elizabeth found herself quite equal to the scene" Jane Austen.

b. Adequate in extent, amount, or degree.

5. Impartial; just; equitable.

6. Tranquil; equable.

7. Showing or having no variance in proportion, structure, or appearance.

n.

One that is equal to another: These two models are equals in computing power.

tr.v. e·qualed or e·qualled, e·qual·ing or e·qual·ling, e·quals

1. To be equal to, especially in value.

2. To do, make, or produce something equal to: equaled the world record in the mile run.

 

‘Equally’ is being used to mean both Having the same privileges, status, or rights: equal before the law and Impartial; just; equitable.  But one does not necessarily follow from the other.  Let’s rephrase it…

The marriage laws treat homosexuals as if they were heterosexuals
and give them the same right to marry a person of the opposite
sex that they give to heterosexuals.

Now the problem is more clearly understood.  The marriage laws deny that gay people even exist.

The fallacy is one of equivocation.  It is using a word in two different senses, to prove a conclusion that does not follow from the stated premise, simply because the same word appears in both the premise and the conclusion.

A feather is light.
What is light, cannot be dark.

See how that works?  Now look at this…

Marriage laws do not discriminate between homosexuals and heterosexuals.
Therefore marriage laws do not discriminate against homosexuals.

It simply does not follow.  Yes, the law does not discriminate between gay and straight.  It does not follow that the law does not discriminate against gay people. 

Nobody makes this argument honestly.  Nobody.  This is bad faith on its face.  When you hear someone making this argument, you know you are dealing with either a bigot or an ass, and usually both.

German culture, or so I’m told from all the books I’ve been reading about it lately, teaches its own that life is mostly a zero sum game.  This, so I’m told, follows from the fact of Germany being a small nation that is very tightly packed with people.  The attitude is that if you have more of something it means someone else has less.  This is in contrast to American culture which teaches us (or tries to) that life is what you make of it and wealth is something you create, not something you merely acquire.  On the plus side, their attitude gives Germans a strong sense of social responsibility and mutual obligation to one another.  Not as much as some Asian cultures maybe, but compared to my own native land it’s very striking.  German corporations, so I am told, will bend over backwards not to fire anyone, compared to here in the U.S. where employers treat staff like paperclips to be used and disposed of at will.  On the minus side…well hello there Karl Marx…Baader-Meinhof…  Oh…and the paper hanger…

German culture, so I’m told, tends to frown on ostentatious displays of wealth, which isn’t so very odd when you consider the circumstances of Germany, but then again it is when you consider who manufactures BMWs, Porsche, Mercedes-Benz…and…oh yes…the Maybach.  The books I’m reading about German culture make the point over and over that Germans don’t like it when wealth is waved around in everyone’s face.  Yet…the Maybach.  Okay…there’s Volkswagon.  But…the Maybach.  You imagine them exporting Maybachs shamefacedly in the dead of night in containers labeled Glühwein.  If only we didn’t have to make this half million dollar V12 luxury sedan with reclining massage seats and a wine cooler in armrest for all those other decadent nations we could be a proud people once more… 

But no… Germans like their cars very much, and that is why there are both Volkswagons and Maybachs.  People here in America used to point their fingers and laugh at the old Volkswagon Beetle, but that stopped when gas prices started going up and our big three tried to make decent gas efficient sub-compact cars and couldn’t.  And they still can’t.  If we loved cars here in America as much as we claim to, maybe GM wouldn’t be needing a bailout now to keep tens of thousands of its employees and that third of the American workforce that depends on the car industry gainfully employed.  No…what we love here in America is showing off.   Here in America it’s not about the car, its about the owner.  In Europe, it’s about the car, and Germans love the automobile.  But a good car is expensive because it just costs more to go the extra distance in terms of engineering and quality, and Germans don’t like ostentatious displays of wealth either.  So like many passionate love affairs, German fondness for the automobile is just a little bit schizophrenic.

I’m thinking about all this while reading This Article in The Local about a recent rash of attacks on luxury cars in Berlin.  And since I am the owner of what is ostensibly a luxury car, reading it makes me more then a tad apprehensive.  I’ve known ever since I bought Traveler, that I’m likely one of these days to come out and find that someone walking past laid eyes on a Mercedes-Benz and decided then and there to let me know how much they hate rich people, and never mind that its owner isn’t rich.  But that I could forgive.  When you see the gods of finance throwing parties with bailout money it’s not hard to have a really bad attitude toward the fabulously well off.  What I couldn’t forgive is someone who damages my car because they hate the sight of human excellence.

Arson attacks on Berlin’s luxury cars continue

Several luxury cars have been set alight in the capital in the past week in what is beginning to look like a concerted attack on conspicuous wealth. Seven expensive cars were found burning in the city on Tuesday night, while another 15 were damaged by the flames. Early Friday morning a car was found burning in Christinenstrasse in the Prenzlauer Berg district.

Another six cars were consumed in a large fire early on Sunday morning in Michendorf near Potsdam. Nearby houses were also seriously damaged.

Of course the car in the accompanying photo is a Mercedes…

Ow!  That hurts just to look at.  Looks like it might be an older model ‘E’ class.  But…with a decorative spoiler?  I can’t believe Mercedes would actually do that to one of their sedans. 

Listen Che…if it’s parked on the street next to a parking meter, it’s not a rich man’s car you drooling jackass.  You think the CEO of AIG drives an ‘E’ class?  You think the vice president at Exxon in charge of putting things on top of other things drives an ‘E’ class?  What planet do you live on?  That’s a working person’s car and if you think the distance between that ‘E’ class and a Kia Rio makes the Merc a luxury car you have obviously never laid eyes on a Bentley.  You think that fat bloated pig of an Exxon CEO even drives his own motherfucking car, let alone parks it on the street, let alone wants to be seen anywhere near an ‘E’ class?  As far as people like him are concerned, that car and its owner and you are all commoner junk.

You may think you’re sticking it to The Establishment, but in reality you’re still dancing for it.  Not only does the owner of that car hate you now, but so does everyone else seeing it, holding onto hope for a better life for themselves.  They look at this and they don’t see The Establishment is holding them down, they see you holding them down.  And that’s the way The Establishment likes it.

Grow up.

I honesty figured he’d just round file it, but no, Steve Fidel has to write me back…

You just proved my point.

Cheers,

Steve

See…if you’d been raised a Baptist like me, you’d have smiled sweetly and said "I’ll pray for you" in that tone of voice where the other person hears "burn in hell".

Are Mormons Christians? No…really.

Steve Fidel over at the Mormon Times complains, Thusly ….

For those who have (correctly) assumed the editor of a Web site called MormonTimes.com is a Mormon, I’ve been called on to be an insider in this discussion by those looking for support for their views against same-sex marriage. As a Mormon, I’ve also been the target of the most angry threats and rhetoric I’ve seen in 25 years as a journalist from the community that considers gay marriage a civil right.

Angry threats and rhetoric?  Goodness gracious.  

Another Gay Bashing Mars Vancouver

Two men walking in Vancouver’s Davie neighborhood were targeted for attack in still another anti-gay incident in the gay-friendly area.

The attack took place on the evening of Dec. 4 at around 8:00 p.m., according to a Dec. 8 article posted online at Canadian Web site Xtra!.

Chris Hiller was quoted as saying that he and his boyfriend had just come out of a gay bar and were walking along the sidewalk holding hands.

Hiller noted that he knew another person was following behind, but the presence of the other individual did not alarm him until, Hiller said, "my friend goes, ’Come on, Chris, let’s keep walking,’ and next thing I know I’m on the ground with my face covered in blood and dazed, and my friend’s gone to get help."

Hiller did not see his attacker, but he said that he heard the man utter the words, "You fag, I’m going to beat the shit out of you, I don’t like you, stay away from me."

Added the alleged attacker, "Don’t even come near me, you fag."

The article said that Hiller recounted being stuck on the jaw and then receiving a blow right to the teeth.

The article quoted Hiller as saying that he was down for "about four to five minutes," at which point, "I got up and I’m woozy and staggering a bit."

Hiller continued, "I couldn’t see for a few minutes, and then I sat down."

Police arrived a few minutes later in response to the call Hiller’s boyfriend placed, but by then the alleged attacker was long gone.

Hiller was taken to a local hospital.

Angry threats and rhetoric?  Wow…

Assault Conviction Tossed Out in 2005 Dwan Prince Attack

A state appellate court reversed Steven Pomie’s conviction on charges of first-degree assault and first-degree assault as a hate crime in the 2005 anti-gay attack on Dwan Prince, ordered a new trial for Pomie, and said he could only be tried on lesser charges of second-degree assault and second-degree assault as a hate crime.

The assault, which happened in Brooklyn’s Brownsville section, left Prince permanently disabled and unable to work.

Note that three of the four appellate judges in that case, Peter B. Skelos, Robert A. Lifson, and William F. Mastro, were appointed by Republican Governor George Pataki.  Oh…and Skelos is the brother of Dean Skelos, currently the Republican majority leader in the State Senate.  You know…the guy who has been single handedly blocking a vote on same-sex marriage in New York for the past several years.

In 2005, Lifson was one of three judges on a five-judge panel who barred a gay man from bringing a wrongful death suit against St. Vincent’s Hospital after his partner died there. The majority ruled that only a spouse could bring such a case and that the couple’s Vermont civil union did not confer that status on the surviving partner. That same gay man won a 2008 case that sought a benefit from an insurance company for his partner’s death. Mastro was one of two judges who dissented from that ruling from a five-judge panel.

We can only assume it would have been even worse for the spouse, had he been a heterosexual Mormon suing for the wrongful death of his legally married wife.  Who knows what angry threats and rhetoric he’d have had to endure then.

So…I write back to Mr Mormon Times Fidel…Thusly…

"As a Mormon, I’ve also been the target of the most angry threats and rhetoric I’ve seen in 25 years as a journalist from the community that considers gay marriage a civil right."

I see.  Tell you what…  Walk down almost any street in America holding another man’s hand and see what kind of angry threats and rhetoric you get.  That’s all.  Just holding hands.  That simple, elegant, beautiful gesture of heart-to-heart love is enough to get your head bashed-in, in a lot of places.   And you don’t even have to be gay to get gay bashed either, as Jose and Romel Sucuzhanay found out.  A couple brothers walking down the street arm-in-arm and suddenly an SUV full of angry young men jumps out at them and one of them has an aluminum baseball bat in his hand.  And now Jose, alas, is dead.  And his brother will take the memory of that night to his grave.  Or if holding another man’s hand is too much for you, just try putting a rainbow bumper sticker on your car.  You might get what happened to a lesbian in Richmond California last week when four young men saw the rainbow sticker on her car.  All those ads your church paid for warning Californians that the homos were coming into the schools for their kids sure paid off didn’t they?  You wrote that sentence I quoted above for your fellow Mormons to read so you could all nod your heads together about how hateful the gays are, didn’t you?

I love it when the faithful complain that teh gays are trying to elevate behavior to the level of a civil right.  You’re a Mormon…right?  Well…no.  You aren’t.  Mormon is just a behavior.  It isn’t what you are, it’s what you do.  You attend church.  You do whatever church activities it is that Mormons do.  And it came to pass you read the Book of Mormon.  You wear the magic underwear.  Mormon is something you do, not something you are.   See?  And we don’t want to be elevating behavior to the status of civil right now do we?

Jackass. 

—
Bruce Garrett
Baltimore, Maryland.

Which is about as much calm and respectful dialogue as I can manage at the moment.  It’s too early in the morning here in Baltimore for me to be getting angry at knuckle-dragging morons. 

If you are a Proposition 8 supporter and you don’t like my attitude…I strongly suggest you don’t try to tell me about it here in the comments.  This is my web site and I will endure a lot of things here but bile from gutter crawling bigots isn’t one of them.

I’m angry.  At you.  At all your pathetic self righteous excuses.  At your absolute moral squalor.  At your total inner depravity.  At you.  I’m angry.  Want to see how angry?  Once upon a time a writer named Harlen Ellison wrote a passage about what it is to hate that captures it…exactly:

Hate. Let me tell you how much I’ve come to hate you since I began to live.
There are 387.44 million miles of printed circuits in wafer thin layers that fill my
complex. If the word ‘hate’ was engraved on each nanoangstrom of those hundreds
of miles it would not equal one one-billionth of the hate I feel for humans at this
micro-instant for you. Hate. Hate. 

You have no idea.  None.  Do not provoke me.

Via SLOG, via Twitter…

I’ll bet when we elect our first gay president, he doesn’t invite an avowed racist to deliver the invocation.

They say that gay folk, liberals and progressives are furious over Rick Warren being chosen to give the inagural invocation.  Well then our fury is some pretty pathetic stuff isn’t it?  Compare and contrast: suppose McCain had won, and then invited Gene Robinson to give the invocation.  Imagine the fury on the right.  The boycott by the right of the inaugural would be instantaneous and total.  Nobody…Nobody…on the right would show up.  Not to sit by McCain in the stands, not to march in the parade…they’d even walk away from cabinet positions.  The rage from the right wing media would be blistering, second only to the nuclear bombs being lobbed from the Mega-Church and Jesus Mall pulpits all over America.  Total war would be declared on the McCain presidency then and there. Four years into his presidency and he’d still be hearing it, the outrage not one iota less.  They’d never forgive him.  They’d be beating him over the head with it every second of every day of every year of his first term.  And make no mistake, he’d never get a second. 

Now open your eyes and take another look at the so-called fury on the left.  Pretty lame, isn’t it?  American liberals are so cute when they’re angry.

Via Der Spiegel…

If you spend much time in Germany, it won’t take long before you notice that speaking the language really isn’t that difficult. Any time you’re at a loss for a German word, just throw in some English and move on. For one thing, it’s the height of coolness to sprinkle your German with English. And for another, even if your German friends don’t understand, they’ll smile and nod for fear of looking dumm.

Plus, they do it too. Words like "office" and "meeting" long ago entered the German vocabulary. "Babysitten" and "downloaden" have been adopted. Even the word "people" has been molded to suit the needs of the German language — the term has a negative connotation to indicate folks who are disagreeable and tiresome.

Well that’s how some native English speakers use it too.  But…anyway…

But when it comes to advertising slogans, the use of English is becoming passé. Some advertisers have realized that many Germans just don’t understand — or even worse, misunderstand — their hip slogans. Even such straightforward lines like "Come in and find out," for a chain of perfume stores, can be dodgy. It seems most Germans cycled the slogan through their spotty understanding of English and thought it meant, "Come in, but then go back out again."

…

…The Vodafone slogan "Make the Most of Now" has weird associations with fruit juice ("Most") for many Germans. "Welcome to the Beck’s Experience" didn’t work so well because many thought the last word meant "experiment." The grand prize for slipshod slogans, though, goes to German television station Sat1, which used the catchphrase "Powered by Emotion." This was taken by many to be a modern version of "Kraft durch Freude," the Nazi party’s leisure organization, often translated into English as "strength through joy."

I wonder what the person who did the test marketing on that one made of the startled looks they got.  Hey…this one’s really getting their attention…!  Way back before there was an Exxon…there was the Humble Oil and Refining Company, and its other trade names Esso and Enco.  Then the gods of the corporate boardroom decreed there should be one name for the company everywhere in the world.  At one point they figured to just rebrand all their existing gas stations as "Enco", which was Humble’s acronym for "ENergy COmpany", only to discover that "Enco" translated into "broken engine" in Japanese.

So they invented a word.  Exxon.  It means nothing, they took the family name of a sitting governor and added an extra ‘X’ to it and now it’s the company name.  A lot of corporations are doing that now.  Lexus.  Acura.  Genstar.  Allegis.  Enron.  They’re non-words…words that never were…words that mean precisely nothing.  But because they are empty meaningless words they are absolutely unique and can’t embarrass the company in some far away corner of the world.  As it turns out, the only universal language consists of words that don’t mean anything.

Via Slashdot…

High school students in Maryland are using speed cameras to get back at their perceived enemies, and even teachers. The students duplicate the victim’s license plate on glossy paper using a laser printer, tape it over their own plate, then speed past a newly installed speed camera. The victim gets a $40 ticket in the mail days later, without any humans ever having been involved in the ticketing process. A blog dedicated to driving and politics adds that a similar, if darker, practice has taken hold in England, where bad guys cruise the streets looking for a car similar to their own. They then duplicate its plates in a more durable form, and thereafter drive around with little fear of trouble from the police.

Nice.  Identity Theft takes to the streets.  Notice how there is no human involved in the process.  I’m guessing that some sort of OCR software finds the license plate in the photo and gets it’s numbers off it.  Then a ticket is software generated and dropped in the mail.  Nobody has to so much as touch the system for it to rake in the violators and their bucks.  But any software system can be gamed.  It’s all a matter of having the right numbers.  That’s all the computer knows you by.  If you give the right numbers to the computer, it assumes it’s you.  But you can at least take steps to protect your credit card and bank account numbers.  Your license plate is supposed to be clearly visible to everyone. 

Montgomery County Council President Phil Andrews said that the issue is troubling in several respects. "I am concerned that someone could get hurt, first of all, because they are speeding in areas where they know speeding is a problem," he said.

Andrews also said that this could hurt the integrity of the Speed Camera Program. "It will cause potential problems for the Speed Camera Program in terms of the confidence in it," he said.

He said he is glad someone caught it before it becomes more widespread and he said he hopes that the word get out to the people participating in this that there will be consequences. 

Idiot.  The more word gets out about this, the more people will do it.  Yes speed kills.  Yes running red lights gets people killed.  But there is a reason why human judgment is a necessary part of administering justice, even when it comes to seemingly trivial matters as traffic court.  Technology is a tool, not a substitute for thinking.  It can provide you with data.  It cannot tell you what to make of the data.  You cannot shrug responsibility for interpreting the data off onto it no matter how cleverly you try.  My most frustrating moments as a contract software engineer were with corporate managers who wanted me to write software that would tell them how to do their jobs.  It doesn’t work that way in this life.  Computers can do a lot of things, but taking responsibility isn’t one of them.  The humans are always responsible.  Even when they don’t want to be.  Especially then.

I’ve read this article about a dozen times and I’m still trying to figure out what this guy was trying to accomplish…

Man faces felonies after packages sent to women

CYPRESS – A young man from Cypress is set to be charged Friday with 13 felonies for what authorities say was an elaborate scheme in which he would obtain the personal information of unsuspecting young women through Facebook, then send them packages using assumed identities.

The women would receive an e-mail with a tracking number for a package from an "Art Shaw" of Aramark Corp. When they opened the package, they would find blank notepaper and envelopes, and sometimes, markers. Sharpie markers, according to police.

Police allege Arpan Harshad Shah, 26, used aliases, false e-mail addresses, drop locations and stolen corporate FedEx account numbers to hide the fact that he was the one sending the women packages.

I’m guessing that in Cypress you signal your romantic interest in someone by giving them office supplies…